Popular art | Definition, Types & Examples (2024)

popular art, any dance, literature, music, theatre, or other art form intended to be received and appreciated by ordinary people in a literate, technologically advanced society dominated by urban culture. Popular art in the 20th century is usually dependent on such technologies of reproduction or distribution as television, printing, photography, digital compact disc and tape recording, motion pictures, radio, and videocassettes. By the late 20th century, television (q.v.) had unquestionably become the dominant vehicle for popular art and entertainment. Motion pictures are also an important medium of popular art but, in contrast to television, can more often attain the enduring significance and appeal of works belonging to the fine or elite arts.

Popular art in general tends to be narrative, to reinforce uncontroversial beliefs and sentiments, to support popular institutions, and to create identity in a social group. It is distinguished by the rapidity of its changes of style, by its revivals from earlier periods, and by its constant borrowings from elite art, folk art, foreign cultures, and modern technology for its song tunes and lyrics, radio and television broadcasts, novels, dances, and many other entertainments, objects, trends, and fads.

Popular dance

Dancing performed in public or in private solely for the enjoyment of the participants is known as popular dance, or social dance. It was practiced as early as 3,000 years ago at both community and family levels. Dancers arranged themselves in circles, or sometimes lines, which gradually developed into chain dances. From the Middle Ages in Europe there was a widening gap between country dances, which subsequently tended to survive in a folk tradition, and the genteel court variety, which influenced social developments in recreation from the Industrial Revolution onward.

In 16th-century Europe the stately pavane and energetic galliard were popular in Renaissance court circles. Such dances by then were performed in couples, side-by-side, and utilized swaying movements, hops, and complex capers. At the 17th-century French court of Louis XIV, new dances were notated for the first time. Such measures as the minuet and gavotte emerged, and in England Charles II imported many such dances after 1660. The cotillion, originally a lively measured square dance from the French court, became popular in the late 18th century. It was performed by four couples arranged in a square facing inward, with pairs of couples alternately executing various geometric figures.

The main century of the waltz lasted from the Napoleonic period to World War I. The waltz—performed by turning couples in a step-slide-step pattern—originated in central Europe and was popular in Vienna and Paris during the Napoleonic Wars. Ultimately the whole of western Europe adopted the measure, and it became socially acceptable for a man publicly to hold a woman in his arms while dancing.

“Cheek-to-cheek” dancing became popular in the second decade of the 20th century. Such exotic numbers as the turkey trot, the bunny hug, and the maxixe were influenced by the new music of jazz. The tango, purged of its more erotic elements, became acceptable to the clientele of the thé dansant (tea dance), and the Charleston epitomized the Jazz Age. When the quickstep and the slow fox-trot emerged, competitions began to be held, reflecting dancing’s wide attraction as a leisure activity. Large public ballrooms flourished in the 1930s and ’40s, especially in Britain and North America, while private dances grew relatively infrequent. It also became fashionable to go to hotels, nightclubs, restaurants, and wherever else there were large dance floors and popular bands and orchestras.

The late 1930s, the early ’40s, and World War II (with its large population dislocations) saw the spread of American cultural influence. The jive, jitterbug, and many such dances that were virtually improvisational originated in the United States, often among the black population, and were subsequently adopted in Europe.

Mainstream popular dance in the 1950s adopted Latin rhythms—including the rumba, samba, and cha-cha. In general from about 1960, starting with the twist, popular dance among the young involved little or no touching between the partners. By the late 1970s and early ’80s, discotheques had taken the place of the old-fashioned ballroom. Echoes of many styles could be seen in disco dances, but popular dancing had become essentially improvisatory and eclectic.

Popular literature.

Popular literature includes those writings intended for the masses and those that find favour with large audiences. It can be distinguished from artistic literature in that it is designed primarily to entertain. Popular literature, unlike high literature, generally does not seek a high degree of formal beauty or subtlety and is not intended to endure. The growth of popular literature has paralleled the spread of literacy through education and has been facilitated by technological developments in printing. With the Industrial Revolution, works of literature, which were previously produced for consumption by small, well-educated elites, became accessible to large sections and even majorities of the members of a population.

The boundary between artistic and popular literature is murky, with much traffic between the two categories according to current public preference and later critical evaluation. While he was alive William Shakespeare could be thought of as a writer of popular literature, but he is now regarded as a creator of artistic literature. Indeed, the main, though not invariable, method of defining a work as belonging to popular literature is whether it is ephemeral, that is, losing its appeal and significance with the passage of time.

The most important genre in popular literature is and always has been the romance, extending as it does from the Middle Ages to the present. The most common type of romance describes the obstacles encountered by two people (usually young) engaged in a forbidden love. Another common genre is that of fantasy, or science fiction. Novels set in the western frontier of the United States in the 19th century, and called westerns, are also popular. Finally, the detective story or murder mystery is a widely read form of popular literature. Popular literature has also come to include such genres as comic books and cartoon strips.